


Trust

by fansofcollisions



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Gen, Religious Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fansofcollisions/pseuds/fansofcollisions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan may not understand what compels Ragnar and Lagertha to keep him, but at least he's found a friend in their daughter. </p><p>(In which I have cute headcanons about Gyda and Athelstan being buddies.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust

The wind has knotted Gyda’s hair into a thousand little snarls, but she doesn’t make a sound as Athelstan runs his fingers through it, trying to work out the worst of the tangles. He remembers when he was young and his mother would run her wooden comb through his little sister’s auburn locks and how she used to wail. This girl is stoic in her refusal to let out the slightest whimper and Athelstan cannot help but smile somewhat at the sternness of her expression.

She passes him a bone-toothed comb from her lap and noticing his little smile, a pink tinge spreads across her cheeks. The comb has little more success than his fingers. As he yanks and tugs at the mess of hair he can see little droplets of moisture form at the edge of Gyda’s shut eyelids. She doesn’t let the tears fall. Athelstan feels a tug of unbidden affection within his heart.

“Is it always this difficult to manage?” he asks in despair, placing the comb beside him on the bench after nearly half an hour’s work.

“It would not be so tangled if you had braided it properly this morning,” she replies, a hint of teasing her tone, and Athelstan runs a hand through his own mass of curls in frustration.

“I’m sorry. I haven’t got much experience in it,” he mutters, and Gyda giggles at his words. She seems to be gaining confidence around him now, and he’s glad. He could use an ally against whatever new devilry Bjorn is sure to cook up in his quest to rid himself of the usurper of his rightful authority as eldest son.

He has no knowledge of how to be a guardian to these children, who seem so independent already. He’s lived a solitary life, far from common society since he was a boy. How is he to know how to deal with a boy who fancies himself a man already, and a quiet mouse of a girl with no mother to watch over her? He doesn’t know how long his captors- are they captors? He’s not sure what to call them anymore- will be out ransacking the unsuspecting inhabitants of Northumbria, how long he’ll be expected to keep playing guardian. The bitter sickness of guilt settles low in his stomach. He both longs for and dreads their return.

“I can teach you,” she offers shyly and, settling herself out of her kneeling position on the ground to his right on the bench Athelstan sits on, takes a yellow strand from behind her ear between her fingers. He does his best to follow the movements of the pieces weaving in and out from behind each other but he’s afraid he lost her before she even began.

“See, it’s simple!” she says proudly as she reaches the end of the strand, and Athelstan thinks that five hundred lines of Latin translation could not possibly be more complicated. Sighing, he begins practicing anew.

\---xxx---xxx---xxx---

It’s dusk and he’s _finally_ gotten Bjorn into his bed. Not without much protest and threatening (from Bjorn, not himself). He’s so unlike his sister for it to be uncanny. She was easy enough to put to sleep. He is mindful to thank God every day for small kindnesses.

Athelstan sits by the water’s edge, knees drawn up to his chest to ward against the night’s chill, and perhaps something else, something he doesn’t fully understand. He shivers. There’s a sea bird perched on a rock out into the middle of the blackened expanse, watching him as he watches it. He wonders if it might be the only one who hears the prayers he lets fly to heaven in harsh whispers. None of his others have been answered, save that which begged for his life to be spared in the monastery. At times, he almost wished all had gone unheard.

So absorbed by the soft lapping of the waves is he that he doesn’t hear the soft patter of footsteps on the rocks until they are near behind him. He startles and turns, regretting at once that he doesn’t have a weapon upon him, though what use it would be to him should any man attack he does not know.

Instead of an assailant, he finds himself facing a trembling Gyda, who flinches back from his quick movement. He holds up his hands as if to soothe a startled animal, but the fear does not leave her eyes, not in its entirety.

“Why are you awake?” he asks, troubled by her shaking form. He stands, intending to lead her back to the safety of her home. Gyda takes a step from him.

“You weren’t in the house,” she says, not answering his question. Her voice holds a small measure of indignation, but beneath the surface there’s a frightened, lost quality that reminds him that under the hardy exterior of these two warriors-in-training, these are still children, children who perhaps miss their father when he’s gone on long journeys across the sea. And now their mother is gone as well… Athelstan drops to one knee in the sand and beckons her. After only a moment’s hesitation she steps forward into his arms, resting her head upon his shoulder. He presses his arms gently into her back, careful to make it clear she can back away at any time.

“What’s the matter?” he whispers. When she draws in a deep breath her throat rattles with that telltale sound of one on the verge of tears. She takes a long while to answer.

“I dreamt-“ Her words are quiet. Athelstan draws her closer, feeling her ache within himself. He’s learned all about bad dreams in recent days. “They’re coming back,” she says suddenly, with resolution.

“Yes. They’ll return soon,” he assures her. He draws back enough so that he can see her face. Even now, her cheeks are not wet. She’s a strong girl. Gyda nods at him, and smiles a little. He returns her smile, however little he feels like it in the moment. (The nights are always the hardest. It’s easier when he doesn’t have time to think.)

“I was being silly,” she resolves, and sits down upon the sand. Athelstan too returns to his seated position, his side pressed against her small frame. She leans into him and he puts his arm around her, sheltering her from the chill.

This is how they sit, silently watching the bird on the rock as it crows at nothing in particular. The moon is bright and it casts shimmers across the water, breeze stirring the surface ever so slightly. There’s a soft exhale against Athelstan’s cheek, and a barely suppressed yawn.

“You should go back to bed,” he says, somewhat reluctantly. Her company is comforting, and the Lord knows he’s been in need of comfort lately.

“I’m not tired.” Her slowed breathing and darkened, drooping eyes tell a different tale.

“You are. Come on now. Time to go in.” He makes an effort to stand but she tugs at his arm, keeping him down.

“Tell me a story.”

“Really, Gyda, come-“

“I’ll be tired if you tell me a story,” she insists. “I’ll go to bed, I promise. Just one.”

He cannot deny her. Athelstan wracks his weary brain for something, anything that will appeal to a child. The details in the stories his father used to tell him are faded from memory, as transient as the ripples in the water; he cannot remember enough of them to tell a good tale. His head is filled now with God and His holy word. The order’s instruction leaves little room for anything else, anything more trivial. It will have to do, he supposes.

Perhaps it is the sea opening up before him, or the days spent huddled and miserable, shaking on a boat bound to uncertain lands, but only one story comes to mind. He begins speaking, struggling to translate the familiar tale into the foreign tongue Gyda will understand.

“There was once a man named Jonah.” She presses closer and hums softly, eyes closed. “He was a good man. He wished to serve God well in his life. You remember I spoke of the one God of Christians?” He can feel her nod against his ribs. “He swore to this God that he would be faithful, and follow where he was told to go. But one day, God asked too much of him. He asked Jonah to go to an unknown land, a land full of sinners and heathens and all manner of wild men. He asked Jonah to go there and bring his love to those people.” Athelstan swallows. “But Jonah was afraid. He ran away from what God asked of him.”

“One cannot run from a god,” Gyda says sagely.

“No,” Athelstan chuckles. “One cannot. But Jonah tried. He took a boat, going as far as he could from that fearful land. So the Lord rose a mighty storm before him. The men who had taken him onto his boat knew he was the cause of their misfortune and threw him overboard, hoping to appease whatever force he had offended.” He can feel the girl shiver beside him. He follows her gaze to the blackened sky. Perhaps tonight was not the best night to speak of storms.

“But God took pity on Jonah. He sent a whale to swallow him up.” Gyda sits up straighter.

“What is a ‘whale’?”

Truthfully, Athelstan has no clear picture in his mind of what a whale looks like either, but he tries his best. “It’s a very, _very_ big fish.”

“Oh…. _Eww_.”

He laughs again. “I think that’s what Jonah thought. He spent three whole days and nights in the belly of that fish. And while he was there, he had time to think.  He realized that he’d been wrong this whole time. He was wrong not to trust God, who had never led him astray before. Not to trust that God’s plan was the best, far better than any he could design. And once he had learned his lesson, on the fourth day the whale spit Jonah up on the shore.”

“It’s good it wasn’t under the water.”

“Yes, it is. He knew now that God had spared him for a purpose. He was still afraid, but he chose to follow God anyways and go to that land, the one he was so afraid of. He went and preached there, and the place was saved.” He chooses to leave off the ending of the story, the part about the withered vines and Jonah’s continued disobedience. He never much liked that part.

“Is that the end?” She sounds disappointed.

“Yes. I’m afraid I’m about as good at telling stories as I am at braiding hair,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand.

“No,” she says resolutely. “It was a good story.” After a moment, she adds, “Your god is strange.”

He smiles down at her. “What makes you say so?”

“Why does he care so much about Jonah? Your god has many followers, Father said so. Why not leave him and find someone else to do what he needed?”

Athelstan must think for a moment before answering her. And even when he does, his voice is laced with doubt. “Perhaps God knew that no one else could do what he wanted Jonah to do.” He pauses. His head feels heavy from exhaustion. He wishes he had more time to think, to answer this girl’s questions satisfactorily: the way he was taught by his elders, with surety behind his words. “Will you sleep now?”

“One more,” she asks, her words slurred in the midst of a yawn.

“Alright, one more.” He knows she’ll be asleep within five minutes. And indeed she is, breathing growing slow and regular and body sliding down to rest across his knees. He murmurs as she falls of a girl who follows her sister to a distant country, who falls in love with a man over strewn bits of chaff and wheat. He brings a hand to gently stroke her hair, already tangled again and sure to need another quarter hour’s combing in the morning, before standing and taking her in his arms and carrying her back to the house.

She’s soft and breakable in his arms and he wonders at Ragnar and Lagertha’s faith, to leave something so precious for him to guard, a man known to them only a few weeks.

With Gyda safe in her bed, he returns to his own place and for the first time under this roof, sleeps soundly and without visions of blood and knives behind his eyelids. He awakes in the morning and pulls the comb through Gyda’s hair and nothing is said of the night before, though Athelstan notices her drawing fish after fish in the dirt later that day.

He thinks of Jonah, and of God’s plan, and trust. It occurs to him, over and over again, that he could run. Run far from here, and no one would stop him. It would be so easy.

He watches Gyda play, and Bjorn mock fighting with a fencepost, and thinks of Lagertha and Ragnar and their devotion to each other and to their family.

Three weeks does it take for his protectors to return, from that first voyage across the sea.

Never once does he run.


End file.
